Romies and Speed (or lack thereoff)

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on February 2nd, 2009, 9:49 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on February 2nd, 2009, 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Since I like Romies, and after playing a particularly nasty war against the Dominion, I noticed that almost all of my ships are extraordinarily slow... and hence it is almost impossible to intercept an enemie's ships, once they get around my main battle line. Anyone else notice this... is my strategy crud, or is this a real issue? 

On a somewhat unrelated note; most of the ships say "swiftly and silently" as their voice-over.... yet I often feel as if the Romies are the slowest of all the races (although not as slow as the Borg). Any chance that the Leavahl and possibly the Generix at least could get a speed boost?

posted on February 2nd, 2009, 9:58 pm

hm the average romulan vessel is as fast as its counterparts, perhaps the dominion player just raced ahead of you cause of Breen Avatar upgrades. but i will take a look, sounds like a good idea to check it again

posted on February 2nd, 2009, 10:05 pm

norexan = fastest battleship in the game
generix = akira
rhienn = monsoon
seems fine to me

posted on February 2nd, 2009, 10:17 pm

Yeah, I thought the norexan was fast compared to the others... 
... but more what I was complaining about was the inability of the littler ships to interecept, perhaps considering the Romies mantra for striking quickly...

Likewise, the generix can be a support vessel; hence as it is "somewhat" slow at the moment, it is definitely irritating not to be able to move it any quicker than the Akira or very many other ships 

posted on February 2nd, 2009, 10:34 pm

perhaps u r right. it would be nice to outrun those pesky federation ships but it would make roms ships even more expensive.

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 10:11 am

Romulan ships are slower than Starfleet ones. At both Warp & Impulse.

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 2:27 pm

...which is more than made up for with Cloak, surely?

[mimesot]

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 2:29 pm

Last edited by mimesot on February 3rd, 2009, 4:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi Tyler!

Where did you get that information from, because there is something wrong about it. Since the StarTrek impulse drive is a fusion  enchanced electro-plasma propelled thruster, thus the (asymptotic) upper speed boundary is nothing but light speed (except, when you run short of fuel *gg*). The only thing that can vary from ship to ship is ACCELERATION, which depends on the thrust by the propellant and the mass of the craft. So wherever you got that information from - and I hope that nonsense was not mentioned in a "canonical" source - please leave it.

The reason why ship-classes in FO (and many other games) do have differend maximum speeds is obviously implementation of a proper gameplay. I personally think, that FO-speeds are quite well balanced, though I'd appreciate faster roms.

For Warp-Speeds you are right. There are of course different maximum speeds, as long as we believe in Alcubierre and the expectation, that exotic matter is sold via amazon.com by April 5, 2063 *gg*.

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 2:53 pm

Since the StarTrek impulse drive is a fusion  enchanced electro-plasma propelled thruster, thus the (asymptotic) upper speed boundary is nothing but light speed (except, when you run short of fuel *gg*).

So a TOS shuttle or a Cube could be as fast as a Sovereign at Impulse?

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 3:03 pm

So a TOS shuttle or a Cube could be as fast as a Sovereign at Impulse?

Yea, if you wanted to let the Cube catch up with you, AND you can burn somewhere around 80 billion times the weight starship in question!

[mimesot]

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 3:29 pm

Last edited by mimesot on February 3rd, 2009, 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you look at the "rocket-equation" for motion in free space:

v(t) = v_g * ln( m(0)/m(t) )

with:
v(t) = speed of the craft after the time t
t = time since starting the engines
v_g = speed of the propellant (electro-plasma in StarTrek, I assume ~100000km/h)
m(t) = mass of the craft after time t

So you see the end-speed just depends on the relative (!!!) amount of fuel within the vessel. Bigger ship, bigger tank, bigger truster --> same acceleration and velocities.

As I said before, differences in motion are just for bringing a exciting tactical feature into the game 

Something else: Some bigger ships don't even need that big tanks because they could host a quantum-singularity of use the bussard-collector. Funny stuff.

[Ozymandias]

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 7:22 pm

Last edited by Ozymandias on February 3rd, 2009, 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you look at the "rocket-equation" for motion in free space:

v(t) = v_g * ln( m(0)/m(t) )

with:
v(t) = speed of the craft after the time t
t = time since starting the engines
v_g = speed of the propellant (electro-plasma in StarTrek, I assume ~100000km/h)
m(t) = mass of the craft after time t

So you see the end-speed just depends on the relative (!!!) amount of fuel within the vessel. Bigger ship, bigger tank, bigger truster --> same acceleration and velocities.

As I said before, differences in motion are just for bringing a exciting tactical feature into the game 

Something else: Some bigger ships don't even need that big tanks because they could host a quantum-singularity of use the bussard-collector. Funny stuff.

Does that equation work for impulse? being the propellent is being produced on board the ship presumably the ships mass doesn't change hence m(0)/m(t) becomes 1 as m(0) = m(t) hence you have ln(1) which is of course 0 leading to the fact the ships max speed is 0.



Anyway I don't see how it matters, theoretical using that equation v(t) tends to infinite velocity which is above the speed of light. You could argue anyway that impulse limits are in fact due to some safety aspect to do with structural integrity fields or time dilation effects meaning ships have different max safe impulse velocities.

I think this is a bit off topic anyway. I have to say I was never really bothered by the rommies speed I don't recall not being able to catch stuff.

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 8:50 pm

Yeah, a little bit offtopic  , you're right. But I didn't want to open a new topic for that, especially because it was not of interest for too many, but just a reply to another remark.

But to reflect your thoughts.

1) The rocket-equation "RE" works for impulse drive, because plasma is ejected -> principle of repulsion.

2) If no Bussard-Collector or any other adequate refuelling mechanism is active, the ship looses mass.  The RE was drived explicitly for the circumstances that reduced mass = ejected fuel. If the mass stays constant the basic equation of motion is fully sufficient: v(t) = v(0) + Force * t² / 2m 

3) Conclusion: Setting m(t) = m(0) in the RE means to eject no fuel -> ln(1) = 0 -> v(t) = 0 -> no repulsion, no acceleration.

4) To obtein your statement you could pretend to have infinite fuel (m(0) = infinity) -> v(t) -> infinity. 

5) Both, the RE and the basic equation of motion, are classical, thus they have no upper limit. Classical equations are quite correct if you stay unter 90% of lightspeed. Above that you have to use the velocity-addition from the theory of special relativity, when deriving the RE. This would give you the lightspeed as max. v(t) again. There is no need for a max. save impulse speed, besides the concerns of radiation deviation. 

I hope I cleared everything up so far. If there are any further things needed to be discussed, write me a PM or let's start a whole topic in the "General"-forum. It's time for some balancing discussion. Have a nice day!

posted on February 4th, 2009, 12:12 am

However, who says we have to use real physics, given that the largely hypothetical Bussard-Hydrogen/Carbon-Collector is not going to work for ST vessels at impulse (the energy taken to speed up particles to the starship's own velocity would be tremendous... except when used at the totally believable "faster than light" warp [yeah right]).

posted on February 4th, 2009, 5:00 am

gues he just used tavaras to often ... this ships are really slow after they met some birds of prey